THE 100pc-owned, high-grade, zircon-rich Boonanarring mineral sands project, 80km north of Perth, exceeded nameplate capacity in the second month of operation in January 2019.
The company achieved profitability in Q1 and was cashflow positive in Q2.
At Q3, the company had produced 201.4kt heavy mineral concentrate (HMC) for the year, with full-year guidance lifted to 260-280kt HMC, which the company said reflected the “better than expected operation performance”.
The company’s ore processing rates had benefited significantly from the installation of a larger trommel at the feed preparation plant in August, which allowed for an 11pc increase in Q3 to hit 874kt.
Image Resources managing director, Patrick Mutz, said that the success of the project in its first year of production had been “nothing short of exceptional”, and that the company was on a journey from “Australia’s newest mineral sands miner to rapidly growing mid-tier prospect”.
The company begun pre-construction activities at Boonanarring in March 2018 with the site entry road and, following the wet commissioning of the plant in December 2018, production ramp-up commenced immediately.
The rapid eight-month cost about $52m.
The mine is expected to produce about 32,400t zircon over the 10-year mine life, and included in the annual production is about 5400t leucoxene and 9000t rutile.
The project has an estimated resource of 14.42mt ore which contains about 8.2pc heavy minerals.
Ore is mined using conventional open-cut dry mining, and ore is delivered to the Mining Feed Unit (MFU) within the active mining area, before being screened and water is added.
The slurry is then treated in the primary concentration plant before a secondary concentration plant to product the heavy minerals concentrate (HMC).
This HMC is then further treated in a dry mill to produce ilmenite, rutile, zircon and leucoxene.
New offtake agreements
Image Resources entered an agreement with China-based Shantou Natfort Zirconium and Titanium (Natfort) for the sale of the entire HMC produced at Boonanarring in May 2017.
The two companies reached another agreement in October 2018 allowing for 50pc of HMC production to be sold to Hainan Wensheng High-Tech Materials (Wensheng).
Natfort and Wensheng will each purchase 50pc of the HMC produced at Boonanarring following the transaction.
On November 12 last year, the company announced it had secured new sales agreements with offtake partners, for the sale of a nominal total of 65kt HMC in Q4 2019 with no reduction in zircon pricing.
The company finalised another regular monthly 20kt monthly shipment of HMC that was purchased by its offtake partner, Natfort.
In addition, a sales agreement has been reached with Haninan Wensheng for nominally 45kt over two shipments.
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